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Author
Topic: taking your meds at a scheduled time (Read 7577 times)

When taking your meds..how important is it take them at the same time every day? I have noticed that hubby doesnt take his at the same time every night. He usually takes them between 7-10 pm. Should he be taking them at the same time every night?

That's a good question. The dosing of drugs depends on the active concentration in the blood. If a drug is cleared rapidly, then the drug will drop below it's active concentration quicker and it needs to be re-dosed to get it back to the active concentration. Those sorts of measurements dictake how many times a drug should be taken per day. When you take the drug it leads to a peak value and when it is cleared this gives a trough value.

When you take medication, it is important to keep on a tight schedule to maximize the chances that you will no dip below the trough value. It is actually more important for once-a-day pills as people tend to adhere loosly to the protocol. Once a day does NOT mean once in the morning one day, and once in the evening the next day. That's a gap of 36 hours, not 24, and the trough values were calculated from 24 hours, not 36. So it is important to keep on schedule. While the difference of 3 hours that you describe is not as extreme as my example, it would be better to take them as close to the correct dosing schedule as you can - as this will make them work better.

R

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I take my meds at 8:00 Am and 8:00pm. I take one viramune and the Viread at 8:00am, and the other Viramune and the Epzicom @ 8:00pm. This is what works for me.

I always try to take them at approximately the same times. I may vary by as much as 45 minutes either way at times, But usually, I try to be exact. In my case, since there are no food restrictions, I also try to make sure I have a little something in my stomach, to help take the edge off.

Me, I dose at 7:00am and 7:00pm and I try to time them around meals. As Ray already mentined, a 3 hour window is not bad but it's not great. AN hour window generally is fine but it does depend on the meds. Your hubbie should ask his doctor next time he sees him or her what kind of window period he can have. If anything, that grace period helps alleviate any stress to taking the meds to the exact time, hour and minute, especially if taking meds and the routine is still not second nature. Once he gets a hand of it and dosing becomes routine; the window period is wonderful if for anything else that extra hour sleep in the morning when he is on holidays!!

I'm kind of like your hubby. I'm on a once-before-bedtime regimen, and I take my pills within a two-to-three--hour range each night. If I'm up a little later one night, I'll hold off until I'm about to go to sleep.

For what its worth, my morning combivir is usually between 730am and 845am and at night my sustiva and combivir is between 9pm and 11pm. In the beginning I shot for 9pm on a regular basis, but because many times we eat late, I lean towards 1030pm or so. I goto the doc today for the latest test results so we shall see how things are going. I have been undetectable the last couple times and the doc does not see a problem with my whacked schedule.

I am however more concerned with what he says about anemia. My last appt with him a few months back was when he said I was borderline anemic. Until last week I was fine. But Wednesday and Thursday I stayed home from work because of fatique. I thought to myself "And so it begins."I am not used to being fatiqued as I have often been compared to a hummingbird in that I keep going and going. For the last month though, weekends and nights after work have been spent building a 24'x10' storage building and I think between that and the heat here in Phoenix have finally started to catch up to me. I hope all goes well, but something tells me that I may not hear the best of news this afternoon. But we shall see.

I asked my doc about this because I take all my meds in the morning with breakfast. This ranges anywhere from 5am until 8am each day. I never take them later than 8am and seldom take them before 5am. So far, so good for me. But, the items I am on reyetaz, norvir and truvada stay in the body for a while I guess.

On my side I try to be , as possible as it can be, on scheduled time.Until recently it was 9am and 9pm with foods. Just started a new once a day regimen last Saturday and from nowone it will be 9am..sharp. I'm taking haart since 1997 and never delayed taking a dose more than half an hour from the scheduled time and never missed a dose. My Vl stays undetectable since the beginning, Cd4 count keeps around 1000 (45%) and my Cd4/Cd8 ratio is 1.15. I believe there is a link between these good scores and being religiously faithfull.

My times are 10 am and 10 pm, so i take them between 9.30 and 10.30 mostly. Sometimes when I m busy I forget and then I take it when I find out. I forgot sometimes to take it at all, but very rarely, and I suppose I took them twice sometimes too.I m on Combivir and Viramune but generic all in one pill. Results good.